Spray Painting Bathroom Hardware

We've probably been over the fact that we're cheap, right?

So naturally, instead of buying new hardware for the bathroom cabinets, we decided to recycle them.

We used Krylon's Brushed Metallic Spray Paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze. And then topped it with a coat of Krylon Triple-Thick Clear Glaze

On Sunday, I started with the hinges from the bathroom cabinets. The were nasty, gold, and rusting. They really needed this.

Door hinges, before.

I sprayed them a total of 3 times (once for each side). Then hit them with clear glaze.

Door Hinges, finished.

So after that was done, we decided to tackle the cabinet handles. We actually only needed to paint one set, since the other set (in the Master Bath) didn't match at all. We bought new handles from Lowe's (the 3 in. "Davis" pull by allen + roth) that would kind of look similar. I wanted everything to match, but Mike made me realize that they are two different bathrooms, and rarely would I be seeing all the handles at once.

New vs. Old

We installed the new handles first, since that was the easiest part.

Then it was time to spray the handles for the guest bathroom. Mike had seen a really efficient way to spray paint door hardware on HGTV awhile ago. You just grab some toothpicks and stick whatever you're spraying into a block of Styrofoam. That way you can get all sides easily.

Handles before...

Handles after.

Handles attached.

The weird white sheen on the handles is from the clear gloss spray paint. It's not as noticeable in real life.

Painting the Bathroom Cabinets

A few posts ago, I showed pictures of the new Baltic Brown granite bathroom countertops. And in this post, I (think) I mentioned that the cabinets would not remain white for much longer.

Yeah, I know. Why would we change those cute dingy not-so-white cabinets? They have such nice mismatched hardware, too... :-X

So the first step was buying paint. I went to Lowe's (which I never do, this was my first time buying paint from them) and picked out a few colors.

Deep Earth vs. Dark Granite

Mike and I had originally picked "Deep Earth" by Valspar, but when I went to go buy the quart of it, my wallet had a change of heart. So, I tried to find a close match in the Olympic brand, which is 5 dollars cheaper per quart than Valspar. The color I picked was "Dark Granite", which seemed appropriate.

Something amazing happened while I was waiting for my paint to be mixed. The girl at the counter made a huge mistake.

She accidentally mixed a gallon of it. SCORE! Instead of Oops!-ing it out and remixing my quart, she just marked it down to the quart price. So now, I have more than enough for any thing I want to paint Dark Granite in the house.

Since the cabinets we're white, I didn't have to prime them. I did wipe them down and steel wool them were necessary. Then I got to painting. It took almost 3 coats to get them to look the way I wanted. I'm going to say that that was due too the semi-gloss sheen of the paint, and the glossiness of the previous paint.

This would be the end result.

Its kind of crazy how much better it looks. We still have to get new hardware, but this is pretty amazing so far.